Team-BHP - Are we past peak Amazon in India? | Are you shopping lesser on Amazon than before?

I still buy online on Amazon. Mainly Amazon Fresh items (non-perishables only), almost on a weekly basis. I still buy laptops (for office) and Android phones (personal) from Amazon. Last year I had got a Samsung S20 FE and a S23 FE from Amazon - from selected sellers only. iPhone/iPad (which i need to buy for office) are bought mostly from Croma physical store.

Wife's cosmetics shopping has got shifted to Nykaa now. Almost zero Flipkart shopping and no quick commerce for me.

I have the contact coordinates of senior management responsible for delivery, product quality and customer service within Amazon.

This ensures that I am able to resolve most issues through a call -> issues still arise regardless.

I do not buy anything on a regular basis from Amazon as it ALWAYS ENTAILS AN ESCALATION which has made me fed up.

I use them only if there is some great offer on a product I need and which I would buy online, all the while expecting a failure in some area.

Amazon has morphed into an extremely incompetent organization from a highly efficient one. I believe the worst is yet to come.

I / my family still prefer Amazon for electronic items, accessories etc. and bigbasket for groceries etc. We also buy some items from the maker's site directly - e.g. mattresses. furniture etc. We do look at flipkart for comparative quotes for larger appliances (laptop, mobile etc.) and buy basis a competitive price. In such purchases we select the brand / model basis general web search.

Quote:

Originally Posted by vinu_h (Post 5919625)

I go to Amazon for the shopping experience, refund policy and after sales support. They are a marketplace with little control over the sellers, so the experience can be different at times.

Amazon is in absolute control of their sellers. Try setting up a store on it. It is as painful as it can be. Once you onboard and start making even intial sales, you would be regularly contacted by Amazon affiliate organisations who'd subtly ask you to manage your store for a fee. Unless you give it to them, your Amazon account will start getting blocked for some reason or the other. Seller support is a joke.

Moreover, if you have a product that really sells, Amazon will copy it and sell it themselves, while making nsure they appear far above your earstwhile great selling product. They may manufacture it or brand a white label China sourced product. They stop st nothing.

For sellers, Flipkart (Wallmart) is way way better. Peace of mind and quite transparent. Seller support is much better than Amazon.

Fake sellers are decently low compared to Amazon on Flipkart.

If my memory serves me right, Flipkart has been much ahead than Amazon till now as far as market share is concerned. This has been true for almost a decade or more than that.
Also, Flipkart and Amazon both have been generating a net loss year on year since maybe a decade which runs into more than 1k crore INR per annum for both.

The duo has been blood shedding each other for the sake of capturing the mammoth sized Indian market.

I have used Amazon only when buying a certain product is not available anywhere else. Sometimes, it happens. Otherwise i have stayed clear of Amazon since ever. Flipkart has been my choice for anything that I have to buy online. Especially mobile phones.

If buying from Amazon, one has to pray to got and do an in depth research so as not to fall in a trap.

My expirience with amazon so far has been a mixed bag. Got 3 great phones for about 65k in total, a smartwatch, earbuds, headphones all are still functioning great. But after we got scammed of around 6k while ordering a drone for my younger brother, little hesitant to order from unauthorised sellers. And the fact that Amazon took zero responsibility for this was very poor from their side. No issues faced with delivery yet, with prime subscription.

As regards to flipkart, never ordered anything from them so far.

OT: Also got scammed by blinkit ordering a watch a few weeks back (recieved the money back though):

Quote:

Originally Posted by arnav17 (Post 5897836)

Decided to order a watch on blinkit today as a gift for my dads birthday and it was a very poor experience.
Order was initiated and was delivered within 8 minutes, but when we opened the box, there was no watch inside!
Had to contact the support team who agreed to pick it up and refund the order.
Refund was processed as soon as the delivery man picked it up, we were scheduled to leave for a program. The delivery guy returned after 5 minutes and said that the managers at the store thought he stole the watch and are refusing to believe him.

The problem was that I dint get an option to say that the entire item was missing. I did mention it to the support team but no one reads anything properly I guess.

As we dint want the delivery boy to get into trouble (he would get a penalty), In the end had to go down to the blinkit store and show them the unboxing video after which they took the product back which is resulting in us going late for the program.

Definitely not an everyday incident but my mom won't let me order anything on blinkit again atleast.

I still use amazon for high value, non-food purchase like cleaners and detergents. Have been smooth and cheaper than even dmart. I think I will continue to do that as it is hassle free.

I just realised all the mobile phones and Televisions I have got where from Flipkart, thanks to their open box delivery and trust over time. Prices competitive with cards and offers too.

IMO, Amazon's position has declined for sure due to poor customer service and heavy filtering of reviews. Even reviews stating that the MRP mentioned is fake gets blocked and so does packaging issues. I understand the need to filter 1 star reviews because delivery was delayed or product damage in transit but anything to do with seller gets blocked too. That is what catches my goat. They need to have category of reviews for logistics to keep it transparent.

I wouldn't write them off just yet, but definitely not their peak times in past 1 year. :thumbs up

Short answer is Yes.

Before 2024, I have purchased products ranging from a few hundred INR to 94K INR on amazon.in and I was sure that amazon would do the right thing in case of any issues.

Today, I don't believe amazon.in is as customer friendly as it used to be in the past. Fake products, bad quality, delivery issues, store replacement are some of the many issues that I have faced in the last year. With every order, there is some or the other issue and it looks like amazon.in is no longer aiming for the high bar that they had set for customer experience.

Increasing competition from hyper locals is squeezing amazon further. Perfect time for a flipkart or ajio to ramp up their customer experience and increase their average order values across their customer base.

For me, nothing has changed. I have been shopping from Amazon since 2013, and the number of orders is still in the increasing trend till end of 2024.
By default, I will search for a product in Amazon. And then compare the prices from Flipkart, e-commerce sites and manufacturer websites.
If the prices are same, then I will go with manufacturer website->Amazon->Flipkart (in that order).
As far as toiletries, I prefer Amazon branded Presto products. I also buy groceries from Amazon Fresh.

I still shop but my confidence in shopping with Amazon has gotten many notches down compared to a few years ago. The poor state of customer service is one of the reasons. Now I am not sure if I will get the original product if I order something, plus in case of returns- it has become rare now. Amazon will not readily accept your return. They might replace with the same product, which again you are not sure of. If the difference in price in local stores is not much, I have started preferring local brick and mortar stores.

Amazon had been go to during the Covid days. In fact, we also got a CC with Amazon and then would get the 5% cash back on it. This was our go to model. In credit card industry we are deadbeats who pay on time, utilise points to the maximum and don't pay any charges to the bank

In the last 2 years, our purchase pattern on Amazon has changed drastically. The only item we shop in Amazon are for groceries, especially when you have deals. Things like olive oil seems to be fairly discounted and you get sweet deals here. Otherwise, it is limited to sub 1000 rupees. Toiletries for home is another category where we get good discounts

Electronics, garments, accessories are all through physical stores. We are slowly turning towards a bit of minimalist living and therefore our shopping pattern itself has changed drastically. For e.g. until I burn through my workout shoes, I dont buy another one.

As far as Amazon goes, what GTO says is true. In addition to that, they have changed their return policies. No longer are goods available for return and refund. You have to buy an alternate for what you returned from the same store.

I use Amazon quite often, not any changes for me, Iam doing as much purchases as much I used to do earlier, here in my area not any quick delivery companies like Blinkit work so I have to depend on the Amazon-Flipkart duos.

But I have seen drastic changes in Amazon's service in the last one year, delivery guys deliver the product without giving me and takes the product with himself, and these guys do not pick up my calls after the product is Out For Delivery, while struggling with the delivery agent, Amazon has put my account into suspicious category :Frustrati, the delivery guy was not delivering my products so I had to place the same order 2-3 times.

Quote:

Originally Posted by GTO (Post 5919445)

Fake goods by 3rd-party sellers. I have zero trust in product authenticity on Amazon.

Last week I orderd a Beer Shampoo, the Shampoo bottle was fiiled with water instead of the Shampoo, even after the bottle was sealed pack, earlier delivery boys used to do scams but now can't trust on the sellers anymore

I believe it really depends on where you live. If you live in the Tier 1 cities of Metros you probably have so many options that Amazon is no longer your go to place. But for Tier 2 and Tier 3 places, Amazon is still the go to place for both its convenience and costs.

Almost every month Amazon is the top of my credit card bills, we buy everything from there. While Swiggy Instamart has been there for an year now, it has only been used for grocery or emergency purchases. The retail shops often does not have the product we want and many a times it is much easier to just add items to your cart from the mobile and click buy now that going to the shop each time. Maybe the convenience of it has made us stick to it.

We have a lot of new retail like Reliance SmartBazaar, Croma etc that opened up, but honestly have not gone there yet. Blinkit just launched a few months back. So newer options are just rolling out now. This thread is making me revisit our shopping habits and look outside amazon :)

We used to order a lot of small items. But their overall process have degraded now.

Delivery guys mark the prepaid items as delivered without actually delivering. Then we have to call customer care, which responds with waiting for few more days and assurance that item will be delivered. When they arent, we have to again call customer care to get refund. These process takes 3,4 calls for each item.

Return process is also tricky. Where pickup boy keeps on marking the pickup failed without actually arriving at the property, and without making a single call. Then we have to call the customer care again to re arrange the pickup. They assure it will be picked up soon, otherwise we need to call again.

These two pain points combined with poor quality of products lead to lot of back and forth. Not worth the time anymore.